


Betty You Fool: GlitchTale Analysis

by ArgentDandelion



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Bigotry & Prejudice, Character Analysis, Gen, Glitchtale, Human/Monster Society, Nonfiction, Pragmatic Villainy, Prejudice Against Monsters (Undertale), References to Undertale Genocide Route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-10-01 17:13:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20346967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgentDandelion/pseuds/ArgentDandelion
Summary: Analyzes the unjustified motivations and disastrous methods of Betty/Bête Noire's evil plan to "ensure humans and monsters never live in peace".





	Betty You Fool: GlitchTale Analysis

Featured: a fool with bad plans.

_In Season 2, Episode 5 of GlitchTale, Betty refers to Frisk as a boy once. Up to that point, Frisk is called a “they”. As this article almost entirely focuses on Season 2 Episodes 1-4 with only a little Episode 5, it will adhere to episode Episode 1-4 customs._

**In brief:**  
Betty’s plans (or “villainy”, in general) are ill-conceived and doomed to backfire on her. Supposedly, her goal is to ensure humans and monsters never live in peace, for a civilization where the two coexist would eventually threaten humanity’s survival. However, her goals are based on unfounded fears, and her motives are contradictory. Furthermore, trying to achieve her goal by killing all monsters quickly, with herself as the obvious perpetrator, and killing many humans (including children) for her plan, is just going to unify humans and monsters by giving them a common enemy.

**Introduction**

In _GlitchTale_, Bete Noire (“Betty”) is a being said to exist for the sole purpose of ensuring humans and monsters never live in peace. Her creator was Agate, the Wizard of Bravery and one of the wizards who created the barrier. Her opinions on monsterkind differed from her brother, another wizard that helped make the barrier. While her brother wanted to destroy the barrier, Agate thought it a good measure to keep the peace. Agate challenged him over the fate of the barrier, lost the fight, and exiled herself. Later, she used a forbidden spell to increase her power, returned, and killed her brother. Dying from the spell, she used her soul and the corpse of her little sister (who she killed to weaken her brother) to make Betty.

Betty herself was released from the barrier itself when it was broken. Soon after she woke up, Agate “uploaded” her memories to Betty, and told Betty her purpose.[1](https://argentdandelion.tumblr.com/post/185687720527/betty-you-fool-glitchtale-analysis#fn:1) Disguised as a sweet human girl, Betty befriended Frisk. She also manipulated Jessica Grey, head of the Anti-Monster Division, who wanted revenge on monsters after learning Asgore killed her missing child 20 years ago. Betty promised to Jessica to turn all monsters to dust (kill them). However, she later showed her true nature: when Jessica wouldn’t give her the hate vial (a noxious power-up), Betty tormented her with a gruesome illusion of her dead child and attacked her.

Jessica, having survived, turns against Betty very quickly. She apologizes to Asgore, asks for his help in defeating Betty, and gets him out of prison/jail to this end. This is all for _her daughter’s killer_, which shows just how drastically Jessica’s beliefs changed. Jessica also cooperates with several other monsters to take down Betty, and gets many humans to team up with monsters as well. She even sacrifices herself so that W.D. Gaster, a monster, may live.

If Betty’s goal is to ensure humans and monsters never live in peace, she _really messed up_.

* * *

**Betty’s Ill-Conceived Motivations**

In roughly a month, humans adjusted very well to living with another species of sentient beings.   
From Season 2, Episode 1.

First, Betty’s beliefs are unfounded, and sometimes even contradictory. She (or possibly Agate) wants to “ensure humanity’s survival.” As she believes monsters are a threat to humanity, she wants to ensure the two never live in peace, or for that matter coexist.

Yet, as Frisk points out in the first episode of Season 1, monsters are harmless[2](https://argentdandelion.tumblr.com/post/185687720527/betty-you-fool-glitchtale-analysis#fn:2): as of that episode, humans and monsters co-existed for about a month without any problems. Furthermore, integrating them into human society with more rights could only benefit humanity, _increasing_ their likelihood of survival. (e.g., Gaster’s CORE expansion becoming a non-polluting, unlimited, self-sustaining power source that will make electricity free and blackouts a thing of the past)

Furthermore, if they somehow did turn hostile to humans, they couldn’t do much and they would be easy to kill off. As Betty knows from experience (and Agate might know from the war) humans are far stronger than monsters and can kill them easily, particularly since humanity as a whole massively outnumbers monsters now.  
Though Betty [evidently](https://camilaart.tumblr.com/post/154217522635/what-am-i-something-made-to-be-hated) believes a civilization with monsters and humans existing together “is just a time bomb waiting to go off” and “that [she is] doing good by speeding up the process”, in going through with her plan she causes problems and casualties where _none_ previously existed.

It’s possible Betty fears monsters would gain godlike power by absorbing seven human souls, just as the Waterfall plaques claim. Though the plaques also claim this had never actually happened, they then say humans attacked monsters out of paranoia they would take their souls. It is possible Agate told Betty about this, which is why Betty thinks monsters threaten humanity.

However, monsters living together peacefully with humans have no reason to do this, and might not even believe it possible so much as a myth humans made up. Indeed, if some monster went rogue and killed a human to absorb a soul, it’s likely other monsters would team up with humans to take down the rogue monster.

Notably, Frisk went up against a god and _won_. If Betty only knew of Frisk’s track record against beings with godlike power, she’d be even more eager to make Frisk an ally, just in case a monster _did_ get seven human souls and cause the worst-case scenario humans evidently feared so long ago.

* * *

**Betty’s Plan is Doomed to Backfire**

An example of cooperation: Jessica Grey, showing the extent of her reversal in beliefs.

Of all the ways she could operate on her (irrational) beliefs, her plan is the worst.   
First, she tricks a monster (Papyrus) into accidentally killing some humans by dropping metal girders on them. Sans (a monster) uses blue magic on the bars (represented as telekinesis) to try to stop them from landing on anyone, but Ms. Grey (secretly allied with Betty) disables his ability to use magic. The girders then crush some humans.   
Later, Betty’s plan involves killing hundreds of humans (including many children) in a short time, to use their souls as a power-up so she can kill off lots of monsters very quickly.

Even if she’s evil enough to disregard the obvious moral issues of her plan, it would still have two problems.  
One, her aim is supposedly to “ensure humanity’s survival”, yet big parts of her plan are blatantly anti-human, and she makes herself a threat to humanity’s survival.  
Two, since she’s neither human nor monster, kills both, and makes it obvious she’s the killer, monsters and humans have very good reason to team up to kill her and, in the process, lessen prejudice between them. This would get them to cooperate _more_, increasing the chances of long-term peace between them.

Therein lies a contradiction: though her plans are supposedly for humanity’s sake, Agate tells her she can’t trust humans, and Betty has no loyalty for humans. Betty evidently corroborates “humanity can’t be trusted” by seeing into Frisk’s memories (stated in supplementary material) and seeing their Genocide Routes. However, she apparently doesn’t check anybody else, and, if anything, wouldn’t she trust Frisk _more_ for those routes if she hates monsters so much?

* * *

**What Betty Should Have Done**

If Betty were smart, she’d act like Batman. Batman is aware Superman is nigh-invulnerable, super strong, and has quite a lot of useful powers. Were Superman to turn evil for some reason, he would be a massive threat to other superheroes and perhaps all of humanity.  
Yet, Batman tempers his distrust/caution with evidence: Superman is very morally principled and (unlike some other superheroes) never kills.

So, rather than attacking, trapping, or disabling Superman immediately because he _could _pose a threat, or even just being mean to him, he acts friendly (by Batman standards) and secretly has a plan to take him down if necessary.

If Betty believes a civilization where monsters and humans live together is “a time bomb waiting to go off”, why not _disarm the bomb_? Wouldn’t it fall within her interests to solve inter-species conflict as much as possible, delay it as long as possible if diplomacy can’t solve it completely, and develop (proportionate) monster-killing plans in case of emergency? Even separating monster society from human society (which, by the way, would deprive humanity of monsters’ benefits) would be a better plan than all that murder.

* * *

**Why Didn’t She Do It?**

The most likely cause for Betty’s irrational and contradictory behavior is: she’s an impatient, short-sighted, and probably also lonely species-ist who fears and distrust monsters for no good reason, wants to make her species-ist mother happy, and she doesn’t consider that her creator or she herself could be coming to the wrong conclusions (e.g., checking Frisk but not anyone else afterwards). (Note that Betty, though not human, is still a child. It’s plausible she didn’t think this through.)

* * *

  1. As far as can be inferred from the [supplementary material](https://camilaart.tumblr.com/post/154185269630/i-suck-at-making-comics-so-dont-expect-any); it doesn’t have any dialogue or explanation. The interpretation was based on how TVtropes described it. [↩︎](https://argentdandelion.tumblr.com/post/185687720527/betty-you-fool-glitchtale-analysis#fnref:1)

  2. In _GlitchTale_, it’s specifically stated that Asgore killed the seven fallen humans, who were all kids. Jessica Grey later visits him in prison; apparently he was in prison for killing those kids. [↩︎](https://argentdandelion.tumblr.com/post/185687720527/betty-you-fool-glitchtale-analysis#fnref:2)


End file.
